Treblinka

Israel on Monday charged John Demjanjuk, a retired American autoworker, with crimes against humanity for what it said was his role in torturing Jews on their way to gas chambers at the Treblinka death camp.Demjanjuk, who emigrated to Cleveland in 1952 and became a naturalized American citizen, was extradited to Israel in February. His trial will not begin until late December or early January. It will be the first to be held under the Israeli law for punishing suspected Nazi war criminals since Adolf Eichmann's trial 25 years ago.Israeli prosecutors say they will prove that Demjanjuk was the Nazi SS official in the Treblinka death camp who tortured Jews on their way to the gas chambers and earned the nickname Ivan the Terrible.

A 70-year-old Polish immigrant who claimed he fixed shoes during World War II has been accused of being a guard at a Nazi labor camp where thousands died, the Justice Department said Thursday. The agency's Office of Special Investigations, which tracks down reputed war criminals, said it will seek to have Bronislaw Hajda stripped of his citizenship and deported. Hajda was accused of being an armed guard at the slave labor camp at Treblinka, Poland, from March, 1943 to July, 1944.

AN ASSOCIATED Press story referred to ''a Polish death camp'' at Treblinka. There were no Polish death camps during World War II. They were Nazi concentration camps. Poles were victims.E.D. WolskiWINTER PARK

John Demjanjuk's deportation from Israel was put off again Thursday when a Supreme Court justice said he wanted more time to consider an appeal from Israelis pressing for new war crimes charges stemming from the ''Ivan the Terrible'' case.Justice Theodore Orr did not say how long he would take to decide, but it seemed likely that Demjanjuk, 73, would remain in prison near Tel Aviv into next week. Orr could reject all appeals and order Demjanjuk freed or he could grant a hearing before five judges on whether there should be a new trial.

CONFLICTING TESTIMONY. Eliahu Rosenberg, Treblinka death camp survivor, testified last spring that John Demjanjuk was ''Ivan the Terrible,'' a guard who operated the gas chambers at the camp. Last week defense attorneys discoverd a 1945 statement in which Rosenberg claimed to have seen another Treblinka inmate kill ''Ivan'' in August 1943. Judges in Demjanjuk's trial Tuesday ordered the Holocaust survivor to return to the stand to be questioned about his statements.

John Demjanjuk told police that even if he were the Nazi guard called ''Ivan the Terrible,'' he was only following orders and could not be blamed for the wartime slaughter of thousands of Jews, an Israeli investigator testified Thursday.But in the same breath, Israeli interrogator Alexander Ish-Shalom testified, Demjanjuk denied being Ivan, the sadistic guard who ran the Treblinka death camp's gas chambers.''If I was in Treblinka, then I was just a small cog,'' Demjanjuk allegedly told authorities.

By Reviewed By Jules Wagman Special To The Sentinel, December 30, 1990

In the end, it comes down to a simple question: Is John Demjanjuk, a retired autoworker from Cleveland, one and the same as Ivan the Terrible, the sadistic guard who relished his job at the Treblinka death camp, where 870,000 Jews were exterminated by the Nazis in 1942 and 1943?Although the evidence piles up overwhelmingly on the affirmative side, another question lingers: How could this seemingly simple person, who led an unobtrusive, quiet life in Cleveland for 30 years, how could he have shot, kicked, stabbed, slashed and bludgeoned Jews as he herded them into the gas chamber?

U.S. District Judge Thomas Wiseman says he expects to complete an inquiry by May into accusations that the Justice Department's Nazi hunters obstructed justice and withheld evidence in the John Demjanjuk case. Wiseman last week heard two days of testimony from two former government lawyers. Both said they had never doubted that Demjanjuk is ''Ivan the Terrible,'' a sadistic guard at the Treblinka death camp in Poland in 1942 and 1943. But one of the lawyers, John Horrigan, who was an assistant U.S. attorney in Cleveland when the case began 15 years ago, conceded that he had not been privy to all information and documents in the case.

John Demjanjuk, convicted four years ago of being the Nazi gas chamber operator ''Ivan the Terrible,'' may have shared the job with another man, an Israeli prosecutor said Thursday. The statement was an attempt to knock down the defense contention that Demjanjuk, a retired Cleveland auto worker, is a victim of mistaken identity. Demjanjuk's conviction and death sentence rested on testimony by five Treblinka survivors who identified him as ''Ivan.'' But in an appeal before the Supreme Court, the defense submitted depositions by guards at the Treblinka death camp that ''Ivan the Terrible'' was Ivan Marchenko.

The Israeli chief prosecutor completed his arguments on Monday in the years-long ''Ivan the Terrible'' case, insisting to the Supreme Court that it should have no doubts that John Demjanjuk had been a ''direct servant of Satan'' as a guard at more than one Nazi death camp in Poland. But one of the five Supreme Court justices suggested in a sharp exchange that the prosecution may have no case unless it could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Demjanjuk had been specifically at the Treblinka camp, where more than 850,000 Jews died.

Nazi hunters have located the first survivor of the Sobibor death camp to claim she can remember John Demjanjuk working there, a lawyer for Holocaust survivors said Monday. Such testimony by the unidentified New Jersey woman could be critical to survivors and Nazi hunters trying to force a retrial of the retired Cleveland autoworker. Israel's Supreme Court last month overturned Demjanjuk's death sentence for war crimes, saying it couldn't be certain that he was the brutal guard known as ''Ivan the Terrible'' at the Treblinka death camp.

The federal government will allow John Demjanjuk to enter this country temporarily if the alleged Nazi collaborator is freed by Israel and if a U.S. court order granting him entry cannot be stayed or overturned on appeal.But Tuesday, the Justice Department restated its arguments to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for keeping him out.''We're not going to defy a court ruling,'' department spokesman Carl Stern said.The department sent its reply brief Tuesday to the Cincinnati court, which is considering the government's motion to stay a ruling by three of its judges.

A majority of U.S. high school students and more than a third of adults do not know what Auschwitz, Dachau and Treblinka were, and they cannot correctly answer ''What does the term 'Holocaust' refer to?''Those are among findings in a national survey to be officially released today by the American Jewish Committee. The survey attempts for the first time to systematically explore how much Americans know about the Holocaust and how they feel it is relevant to modern society.By the number of well-publicized events this month in the United States and overseas, it seems that the German Nazis' systematic extermination of millions of Jews and other targeted victims five decades ago is well-remembered.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Wiseman says he expects to complete an inquiry by May into accusations that the Justice Department's Nazi hunters obstructed justice and withheld evidence in the John Demjanjuk case. Wiseman last week heard two days of testimony from two former government lawyers. Both said they had never doubted that Demjanjuk is ''Ivan the Terrible,'' a sadistic guard at the Treblinka death camp in Poland in 1942 and 1943. But one of the lawyers, John Horrigan, who was an assistant U.S. attorney in Cleveland when the case began 15 years ago, conceded that he had not been privy to all information and documents in the case.

A former prosecutor testified Thursday that he told his Justice Department superiors in 1980 it was ethically wrong to press a case against John Demjanjuk as the notorious Nazi death-camp guard ''Ivan the Terrible'' because the evidence was too contradictory.George Parker told a federal judge investigating the prosecutors' conduct that he quit the Justice Department partly because he could not convince his supervisors that Demjanjuk had been falsely charged. He said they disposed of a five-page memo he wrote describing his ''gnawing doubts'' about the case in a meeting that lasted less than 25 minutes.

A federal judge has been appointed to investigate whether U.S. authorities withheld evidence during John Demjanjuk's extradition that would have cast doubt on the war-crimes case against him. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday named U.S. District Judge Thomas A. Wiseman Jr. of Nashville, Tenn., to look into the case of Demjanjuk, convicted in Israel of being the Nazi death camp guard known as ''Ivan the Terrible.'' The appeals court rejected the government's contention that it no longer has jurisdiction over the case.

TESTIMONY ENDS. An Israeli prosecutor concluded six days of cross examining John Demjanjuk on Wednesday by telling him, ''There is no way to avoid concluding you are in fact Ivan the Terrible from Treblinka.'' Demjanjuk shot back, ''That's a lie.'' The Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk, 67, is a former Ohio autoworker who was stripped of his U.S. citizenship. He is charged with being the notorious Ivan, a guard who operated gas chambers at the Treblinka death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. The trial resumes today.

NEW EVIDENCE. Israel's Supreme Court will hear new evidence in the case of John Demjanjuk, sentenced to hang for killing hundreds of thousands of Jews in Nazi gas chambers during World War II, his lawyer said Thursday. Yoram Sheftel said he found a witness who would prove the Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk, 69, was not the brutal guard ''Ivan the Terrible'' at Treblinka death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland but a victim of mistaken identity.

John Demjanjuk, convicted four years ago of being the Nazi gas chamber operator ''Ivan the Terrible,'' may have shared the job with another man, an Israeli prosecutor said Thursday. The statement was an attempt to knock down the defense contention that Demjanjuk, a retired Cleveland auto worker, is a victim of mistaken identity. Demjanjuk's conviction and death sentence rested on testimony by five Treblinka survivors who identified him as ''Ivan.'' But in an appeal before the Supreme Court, the defense submitted depositions by guards at the Treblinka death camp that ''Ivan the Terrible'' was Ivan Marchenko.